Quality of Care

For most physicians, quality and quality improvement are not high priorities. A 2003 Commonwealth Fund Survey of Quality of Care covering more than 1800 physicians throughout the country confirmed this observation.2 The study’s authors found that physicians’ adoption of measures, tools, and quality is moving slowly and is not where it should be to achieve a high performance. A major obstacle to physicians’ making quality improvement routine was lack of information about their own practices. The study also noted that physicians are uncomfortable sharing physician-specifi c performance data with the general public, with their patients, or with medical leadership. Finally, the study observed that practice size affects the likelihood that physicians receive and use data on quality of care. Those in practices with 50 or more physicians were more likely to be involved in quality improvement activities than those in smaller practices.